Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Israel should kidnap Barack Obama and put him on trial like a Nazi, Ukip candidate says

Jeremy Zeid says Israel should 'do an Eichmann' on the US president

Jon Stone
Tuesday 31 March 2015 10:48 BST
Comments
A Ukip rosette
A Ukip rosette

The Israeli government should kidnap Barack Obama and put him on trial like a Nazi war criminal, a Ukip election candidate has argued.

Jeremy Zeid, the party’s candidate for Hendon, said Israel should “do an Eichmann” on the US president.

Adolf Eichmann one of the architects of the Holocaust, was kidnapped by the Israeli secret service in 1960. He was put on trial, found guilty of crimes against humanity, and hanged.

“Once Obama is out of office, the Israelis should move to extradite the bastard or ‘do an Eichmann’ on him, and lock him up for leaking state secrets. After all what’s sauce for the Pollard goose is sauce for the Obama gander, don’t you think?” Mr Zeid said.

“Just kidnap the bugger, like they did to Eichman, who suddenly found that he'd woken up in Israel. The problem is that Israeli jails are far more humane and adherent to human rights than American ones.”

Mr Zeid appeared to have been angered at a news report suggesting the US government had released documents confirming the existence of Israel’s nuclear programme, which is officially secret.

He made the comments on his Facebook page, which has now been deleted. The comments were revealed by the Purple Rain blog.

The candidate caused anger last year after he claimed some parts of London were being “ethnically cleansed” of white people. He later wrote that his tweet was “badly worded”.

“Free speech, it seems, only applies if it’s the right, or rather ‘the left’ kind,” he wrote in an article for the Jewish News website.

In an interview yesterday with the Jewish Chronicle website Mr Zeid stood his comments and likened himself to the French cartoonists massacred in Paris last year.

“Remember that phrase ‘Je Suis Charlie’? - well, freedom of speech,” he told the newspaper.

“[President Obama] wants to do a deal with Iran - which wants to wipe Israel out, to see the Jewish State gone to dust. Left-wing Jewish people do not want to deal with it.

He told the website that he was quitting as candidate: “I am done with politics because people focus on the minutia,” he said.

A Ukip spokesperson told The Independent: "Jeremy Zeid resigned as a candidate last week, citing his health. Ukip accepted his resignation."

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in